Jeremiah Silkowski

Founder and CEO

Jeremiah Silkowski is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of SQN Capital Management and its group of companies. Jeremiah has recently been named one of the “50 Most Influential People in Asset Finance” by Leasing Life and was the recipient of the 2015 External Investment Award given for SQN Capital Management’s success in introducing asset finance and equipment leasing as a viable investment vehicle for a broad range of non-traditional investors in the space. Jeremiah lives in New York City with his wife and son and is also the Associate Publisher of Society and Diplomatic Review, a magazine originally intended to be exclusively distributed within United Nation community but has grown to promote business and commerce across the member nations.

Direct Lending 2.0

Alternative Credit ‐ Round Table Discussion

The 22-strong roundtable discussed various aspects of opportunities in the non-bank lending space including the opportunities in SME lending, the maturity of the market and the sustainability of some platforms' business models and the need for greater transparency.

Christian Gut, manager of the P2P lending Fund, said investors need to fully understand track records of managers/funds and of how loans are performing. He said it is “really hard to understand” like-for-like comparisons when platform are changing underwriting models. “Every country and platform is doing things in different ways. The industry should decide a certain level of credit and risk that should exist across the aboard,” he said.

Maseco’s Matthews added that niches are well suited to alternative credit but “you can’t throw a lot of money” at them as this would harm yields.

RM’s Nicholl’s said that trust in the sector could be improved by third party audits leading to more capital into the sector.

AltFi Data’s Fekete added that lenders are showing more and more interest in having their data assessed and compared on a like-for-like basis. That is a vital part of the maturation of the sector, he said.

Lightning Talk

Direct lending is about more than just lending; managing relationships and recoveries

Silkowski believes that alternative finance won’t - in time – be deemed to be ‘alternative’ and that traditional banking also won’t be called ‘traditional’ due to convergence between the ‘disruptor/incumbent’ model.

He said, however, that platforms being solely focused on scaling loans volume will be dangerous.

He added that it is harder to raise capital for direct lending, especially in the asset leasing space, in the US compared to UK where demand is high.

Direct lending is about more than just lending; managing relationships and recoveries

Defining the universe: How broad is "alternative credit" as an asset class?

AltFi provides market-leading news, opinion, insights and events for the rapidly-growing alternative finance and fintech community. Our core focus is on disruption to lending, banking and investing, including peer-to-peer lending, challenger banks, digital wealth management and institutional adoption of crypto technology. In addition, AltFi runs major industry events around the world.Find out more